In Service Pack 1 you can choose between two Virtual Switches; You can use either the new Logical Switch or you can use the Standard Virtual Switch, which is basically the “legacy” Virtual Switch with the default Hyper-V Virtual Switch functions. If you create the Virtual Switch on a Hyper-V host you can choose between the two options and this allows you to choose the Logical Switch.

Standard Switch

The Standard Virtual Switch is basically the normal Hyper-V Virtual Switch and the configuration looks exactky the same as in the Hyper-V Manager. If you add a Hyper-V Host to SCVMM and you have previously created the Virtual Switch using Hyper-V Manager or PowerShell cmdlets, this Virtual Switch will be shown as Standard Switch.

In a nutshell:

The Standard Switch can only be deployed on one network adapter, so if you want to use network teaming you have to create the network teaming manual on the Hyper-V host.

Existing Virtual Switches will be shown as Standard Switches in SCVMM, you have to recreate the configuration if you want to use the Logical Switch.

With the Standard Switch you can set the one single management vNIC which can be used by the Management OS. You can attach additional vNIC using Windows PowerShell on the Hyper-V host but not from the Virtual Machine Manager Console

Logical Switch

A Logical Switch includes Virtual Switch Extensions, Uplink Port Profiles which define the physical network adapters used by the Hyper-V Virtual Switch for example for teaming and the Virtual Adapter Port Profiles mapped to Port Classifications which are the settings for the Virtual Network Adapters of the virtual machines.

In a nutshell:

The Logical Switch allows you to add multiple NICs in one Virtual Switch and creates a NIC teaming based on Uplink Port Profile. The Uplink Port Port Profile includes all the information which teaming mode and algorithm has to be used.

The Uplink Port Profile also includes a list of available logical network sites. If you have an additional Logical Network which runs on this network adapters you can simply add this to the Uplink Port Profile.

Logical Switches only work with windows Server 2012 , but there is no need to stay on Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V.

If you are running Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V hosts there is no reason why you should not use the Logical Switch, which adds additional functionality and centralized management to the Hyper-V Virtual Switch.

To use the Logical Networks in System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 on a specific Hyper-V Host or Hyper-V Cluster you have to add the Logical Network to the network interface which the logical network is available. In the GUI you can do this in the properties of the Hyper-V host under Hardware.

if you have a lot of Hyper-V hosts this can take some time. This Windows PowerShell script will help you. It will add the logical network on each Hyper-V host. It chooses the network adapter based on the network adapter name which is given on the Hyper-V host.

With the release of Service Pack 1 for System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager this is gone if you use the Logical Switch.

About

My Name is Thomas Maurer. Microsoft MVP for Hyper-V. Work as a Cloud Architect for itnetx gmbh, a consulting and engineering company located in Bern/Switzerland. I am focused on Microsoft Technologies, especially Microsoft Cloud Solutions based Microsoft System Center, Microsoft Virtualization and Windows Azure.